It was no fault of McMurray and, unlike other wrong-place-wrong-time accidents, a driver shouldn’t expect a piece of the track to come apart and ruin his day.

But what is fair is not always right. This is a simple case of, while it appears there’s a simple answer — let the dude fix the car, you heartless NASCAR officials — there really isn’t.

Robin Pemberton told the Sporting News Sunday night that it comes down to the issue of trying to determine what was specifically broken on McMurray's car and exactly what was the track’s role in the damage.

“What starts out as a splitter today winds up being a changed lower control arm the next day,” he said.

He has a point — give a crew chief an inch and he will try to take a mile. NASCAR doesn’t want to open up a can of worms with crew chiefs saying “the wall didn’t do its job right, let us fix some of the car” or “there were marbles from the track, not our fault.”

And what if the part of the car that is damaged, when repaired, the adjustment makes the car significantly better? To avoid potentially giving a driver a chance to gain an advantage after having bad luck, NASCAR opts for a tough-luck policy.

NASCAR is willing to make exceptions if several cars are damaged, as it did earlier this year when the force of air from a jet dryer damaged cars at Texas or last year when a broken camera cable damaged cars at Charlotte. But when one car is damaged, giving the entire field a chance to work on cars would allow a team running poorly a sort of halftime break for adjustments, and this is a sport that prides itself on no breaks at its top levels.

So should it just be tough cookies for McMurray? You can say that’s just sports, but what if it happens during the Chase? Losing valuable points for hitting a pothole just doesn’t seem right.

NASCAR should at least seek a happy medium to appease both its concerns and the fairness to competitors.

Maybe NASCAR can come up with a list of items that can be fixed without losing track position when it is obviously clear that the track caused the damage. Maybe NASCAR can limit the repairs to just body work. Maybe NASCAR can limit the time worked on the car to two to three minutes so teams can’t turn a disadvantage into a big advantage.

It is a slippery slope, and views from top wrenchmen in the garage vary. But hopefully NASCAR can take a look at the policy and see if this is one area where it can write a rule that shows both some brains and some heart.